Since 1910, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History has inspired curiosity and learning about the natural world and our place in it.

Staff Profiles

06/27/2015

The United Nations establishes international days to promote awareness on global issues and to commemorate important events. Other groups declare a day for much less serious reasons, for example, the delicious Strawberry Shortcake Day or the playful Go Fly a Kite Day. Depending on the calendar, there is a “Day” for nearly everything you can imagine, except …..polychaetes.

Polychaetes are segmented worms (I heard those eews!) that are found mostly in saltwater. There are about 8,000 named species in the world and at least twice that many still to be named. They are very important animals in the food webs that are critical to keeping our oceans healthy --- many are even breathtakingly beautiful.

Polychaetes are found in all marine habitats from the deepest oceans to the shallowest tide pool, and even in freshwater habitats. They are often the most numerous animals in a square meter of sea floor mud. They range in size from less than a millimeter as adults to several meters long. They are found in the fossil record back through the Cambrian. They build reefs from their tubes, turn over the seafloor much like their earthworm cousins, and are a major part of marine food webs. Most have hydrostatic skeleton, which means instead of their muscles working on hard structures like bone or cartilage, they work on pressure from water – think about a water balloon pushing and pulling against that constricted water. Bottom line, they are essential and fascinating members of our world.

Serpula uschakovi, a serpulid polychaete. Photo by Alexander Semenov.

So, if Gummy Worms get a day, we decided it was time that polychaetes get one too. We chose to commemorate a great polychaete scientist, Kristian Fauchald, a dedicated scientist who spent 36 years at the Smithsonian. Kristian passed away in April, and we decided to commemorate him on what would have been his 80th birthday – July 1, 2015.

Our goal is to share the beauty, interest, and importance of polychaetes with the world on this day in honor of Kristian. To do that, we are encouraging a global conversation with a large network of activities and experts talking to the public at museums, aquaria, and science education centers around the world.

12/23/2014

Every year a little magic happens at our Department’s holiday party. If you were around last year, you might have seen what I mean: the amazing #anthrocakes that archaeologist Eric Hollinger creates for the party every year. I think you’ll agree it’s “Tut”-ally amazing!

He’s created everything from a delicious caramel recreation of the Cliff Dwellings at Mesa Verde, to a giant chocolate Aztec calendar stone that he carved painstakingly with a nail! You can see more of his past creations here; don’t miss the chocolate terracotta army from the tomb of the first Emperor of China!

The cake is a big secret every year until the day of the party. So what did he make this year? A giant chocolate fondue volcano of Hawaiian-inspired archaeological goodness! This year's cake was inspired by the archaeological site, Pu`uhonua O Hōnaunau. I've visted the site before, and I can attest to the accuracy of the sea turtles on the beach in this cake! They swim right up on the beach there, and the entire site is fascinating.

So what is so important about this site, you ask? Well, do you remember that scene from Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, when Quasimodo yells “Sanctuary!” from the top of the church, claiming refuge for Esmeralda? In old Hawaii, if people needed a safe refuge, they’d make their way to Pu`uhonua O Hōnaunau! A puuhonua was a place of refuge for anyone who had broken a law. Did I mention that the punishment for breaking a law in old Hawaii was death? Laws, or kapu, were central to Hawaiian society, and governed many different aspects of behavior. So if you’d transgressed, your only shot was to hightail it to a puuhonua, and hope you did not get caught on the way there.

You don't want to mess with these guys. Ki'i, guardians of the Kapu. Photo Credit: Eric Wienke, Flickr.

While this year's cake was not an exact recreation of an archaeological site, it drew inspiration from Hawaii's natural beauty and cultural heritage. It features a Hawaiian volcano with flowing (chocolate) lava, a waterfall, tropical flowers, palm trees, sharks, turtles, beaches and ocean, as well as elements of Hawaiian cultural sites. The cultural features included tapa cloth, tiki statues, huts, taro fields, outrigger canoe with sail, and stacked stone walls.

The volcano was inspired by Kiluawa's recent eruptions. It was about 2.5 feet high and was built around a chocolate fountain. An underlaying structure of recycled ethofoam packing blocks and cardboard were erected to form the main body of the volcano without it becoming too heavy to move.

One challenge was to redirect the flow of chocolate from the uppermost part of the fountain out onto the mountain and back again to the bottom reservoir where it could be warmed again and pumped back to the top. This was accomplished by forming aluminum foil channels to guide the flow in to paths around and back to the bottom. The foil was hidden under a coating of melted chocolate. Once finished, party-goers were able to dip fresh cut pineapple, papaya and banana into the lava as a fondue!

The mountain was covered with a total of 11 red velvet cakes which were left mostly exposed to show the surface. The outer crust of the cake, the color, and the interior spongy bubbly nature of the cake mimicked what much of the Hawaiian lava actually looks like when it has cooled.

Cake under construction. Photo Credit: Eric Hollinger.

Hawaii just wouldn't be Hawaii without flowers, so Eric took a class on flower making! The flowers are made of a specialty modeling chocolate which is cut, shaped and then painted to look like real flowers. Some of the flowers Eric made were actual violets from his yard that were coated with sugar for preservation!

Eric used many sources to assist him in crafting the cultural objects you see on the cake. Books on Hawaiian carvings and Hawaiian canoes were studied and Curator Adrienne Kaeppler advised on the project to make sure the canoe and statue were accurate.

The canoe was carved from solid chocolate and a Pocky, chocolate covered biscuit stick, was used as a mast. It was very hard to rig the distinctive Hawaiian sail since it was made of a flexible printable icing sheet, like the kind used to print photos onto a cake. The tapa were printed onto this same material. Tapa is made from Mulberry bark pounded into a cloth and dyed. Dr. Adrienne Kaeppler, Curator of Oceanic Ethnology, has a long term project on tapa cloth, which you can read about here.

The tiki statue was carved from solid chocolate using a real statue as a model. The huts were made using pretzel sticks and chocolate to form a frame and large shredded wheat biscuits were cut in half to form the thatch of the roof. Taro, a main staple of the Hawaiian diet, was featured in a wet field made of molten sugar and fondant taro plants. Palm trees were made of large pretzels and had fondant fronds attached at the top. The wall, which encloses the royal grounds at the actual archaeological site, was made of chocolate covering macadamia nuts.

Royal grounds of the cake, complete with huts and taro fields. Photo Credit: Eric Hollinger.

In the end, this amazing creation featured both the flavors and images of Hawaiian cultural and natural beauty and offered a fun and interactive addition to this year's Anthropology Holiday Party! Thanks for reading and Mele Kalikimaka to you...

07/01/2014

The World Cup is the perfect time to talk about the natural history of hummingbirds.

We have one person to thank for this: Dr. Richard Zusi, the Smithsonian’s emeritus curator of birds and the grandfather of Team USA midfielder Graham Zusi.

A hummingbird’s heart rate can soar to more than 1,200 beats a minute when flying. During a game, a soccer player’s will hover around 172 beats per minute. Image: Thalurania colombica, by Flickr user Kathy & sam under Creative Commons.

Dr. Zusi remains one of the all-time greatest comparative anatomists in ornithology. He has written entire books describing the insides of these hovering creatures. In one, he methodically documented 132 different muscles within the hummingbird—from its eyes to its weak hindlimbs.

Smithsonian emeritus curator of birds, Dr. Richard Zusi.

Zusi’s studies have informed a larger understanding of variation, adaptation, and evolution among hummingbirds. No they were not around when the dinosaurs roamed, but they have graced planet Earth for some 35 million years.

Today there are around 330 different species of hummingbirds. While they can and do eat insects for protein, they are widely celebrated for their role as pollinators. Some plants, like Heliconia caribaea, even depend on hummingbirds to survive.

Although he retired 20 years ago, Dr. Zusi continues to publish. We interrupted his unpaid research to ask him to ruminate on soccer and hummingbirds. He emailed these thoughts:

Hummers use their feet only for sitting and scratching their heads.

Soccer players use their feet for everything except scratching their heads.

Hummers sometimes fly backwards.

Soccer players sometimes run backwards.

Hummers are aggressive and fight other hummingbirds.

Soccer players are aggressive and fight other soccer players.

Hummers protect their food flowers from other hummers, not always successfully.

Soccer players protect their net from other teams, not always successfully.

Hummingbirds prosper by laying only two eggs.

Soccer games often prosper with only two goals.

Dr. Zusi has a dry sense of humor. His protégé and successor Dr. Gary Graves said Zusi had him laughing non-stop when the two participated in a 1986 expedition to Brazil. They were part of a team documenting the fauna of the Rio Xingu, a tributary of the Amazon. During a span of 7 weeks, they ate armadillo soup, bathed with piranhas, and found more than 260 species of birds, including the spectacular hummer Lophornis gouldii .

Smithsonian bird curator, Dr. Gary Graves, holds two of the larger specimens from our collection of approximately 12,000 hummingbirds. For the past 150 years, scientists like Graves and his predecessor, Dr. Richard Zusi, have assembled and shared the research collection with scientists worldwide.

These bird specimens now reside in the collections of the Museum of Zoology at the University of Sao Paulo and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Our curators and collection managers will preserve them in perpetuity for future researchers to study.

Graham Zusi, if you’re too busy to see this collection while you’re in Brazil, come visit us in Washington, D.C. Also, your Grandfather and Grandmother Zusi are proud of you. Good luck!

WANT MORE?

If you think scoring soccer players are impressive in slow motion, watch this high-speed video of flying hummingbirds shot by engineering students from Stanford University.

07/05/2011

Richard Rathbun oversees construction of the National Museum of Natural History, August 1905. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Rathbun spent the rest of his life at the Smithsonian, and took on a variety of challenges. He was instrumental in overseeing the design and construction of the new National Museum of Natural History, writing highly readable, detailed reports of every aspect, including collections management and exhibition. There is no doubt that his early days of exploring stone quarries stood him in good stead. No stone was left unturned by Rathbun and his “Report of the U.S. National Museum 1911” is used today by design and project managers, exhibit staff and anyone who wants to know the rich construction history of the museum.

In addition, Rathbun was instrumental in developing the first national gallery of art in the United States. He oversaw the acceptance of the collections of Mrs. Harriet Lane Johnston, William T. Evans which were installed in the north hall of the new National Museum of Natural History. In addition, he was instrumental in the acceptance of Charles Lang Freer’s gift of his collection to the institution, and the creation of “The Children’s Room” on the first floor of the south tower of the Smithsonian Castle. It is thanks to Rathbun that the Smithsonian is open on Sundays, as he initiated the Sunday hours.

As with any administrator, Rathbun delt with a number of problems, many of which reached the local newspapers. One of these was the “Sun Dance Affair,” where Smithsonian anthropologist James Mooney responded to charges that he paid the Cheyenne tribe to perform the dance and “incited Indians to practice self-torture.” Another scandal – and another headline Rathbun dealt with was “Bad Use of Checks” by the institution’s disbursing officer (think CFO), W.W. Karr. Mr. Karr, a twenty-year employee, was charged with embezzling $46,000. Prior to Karr’s arrest, Rathbun, a friend and colleague, went to Karr’s home and asked about the missing funds. Karr threatened suicide, whereupon Rathbun left to discuss the matter with Secretary Langley. Both men notified the police who arrested Karr at his Washington D.C. home. Karr, who attempted to draw a gun, said to police he wished he had used the gun sooner.

The Rathbun family served the Smithsonian well. His sister, Dr. Mary Jane Rathbun (1860-1943), began her Smithsonian career as a copyist in the Division of Marine Invertebrates. She devised a unique record system for the collection and wrote over 158 papers on crustaceans. She became an assistant curator in charge of the department until her resignation in 1914, a story in itself. Miss Rathbun was, for all intents and purposes, a one-woman show. When she asked for an assistant, she was denied one. A woman of principle as was her brother, she resigned from her position, used her salary to pay for the assistant (who was Dr. Waldo L. Schmitt) and volunteered at the museum for twenty-five years as an “honorary research associate.”

Little is known about Rathbun’s immediate family. He lived with his wife Lena and son Seward at 1622 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. According to Rathbun’s granddaughter, Edith who was born after her grandfather’s death, Seward told her that his father was “a quiet, unassuming man who preferred small dinners with friends to the busy Washington social life”.

Rathbun died in Washington on 18 July 1918. His colleagues wrote of “their profound sorrow at the loss of a sincere friend, an executive officer of marked ability and one whose administration has had a wide influence upon the scientific institutions of the nation.” He is buried in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, D.C., just a few miles from the building – and the institution – he so loved.

06/28/2011

Sadly, many Smithsonian staff over the years have been forgotten and relegated to the index of history. One man deserves to be resurrected for his vast contributions to the institution and that man is Richard Rathbun. Rathbun is perhaps the most important employee in the history of the National Museum of Natural History that you have never heard of. He, more than anyone, exemplifies the phrase in government job descriptions “other duties as assigned.”

Rathbun was born in 1852 in Buffalo, New York. His interest in geology and paleontology stemmed from visiting local stone quarries to detect fossils. At age 16 the young Rathbun went to work at his father’s stone quarry as a financial clerk. He read everything he could on the subject, and his favorite book was “The Old Red Sandstone: New Walks in an Old Field” published in 1841 by Scottish geologist Hugh Miller and still used as a reference book today.

Shortly before his 19th birthday he began the collections of paleontology in the Buffalo Museum of Natural Sciences and was made its curator. He pursued his studies of paleontology at Cornell and later Harvard and during that time, worked at the Boston Society of Natural History. His predilection towards multi-tasking was becoming a life-long trait.

For a brief time, Rathbun’s interest turned away from paleontology when he volunteered as a scientific assistant with the U.S. Fish Commission (at the time a division of the Smithsonian). He traveled to Brazil several times in the 1870s and wrote papers on coal deposits and coral reefs. This work, as often happens with volunteers, turned into a full-time job with the Fish Commission as a scientific assistant, where he studied dredging expeditions off the eastern and southern coasts of the United States among other things. Many of his notebooks from these expeditions are now in the Smithsonian Archives.

For a time, he was detailed to Yale University’s Zoology Department and left there in 1881 when he was appointed curator of the Department of Marine Invertebrates of the new U.S. National Museum at the Smithsonian. He prepared numerous catalogues on scientific investigations in sea and salt waters, sponges and their trade, methods of fisheries, lobster culture, and reviews of fisheries in the Pacific Northwest. He was an early advocate of the preservation of food fish and from 1891-1896 served as the United States representative on the “Joint Commission with Great Britain Relative to the Preservation of the Fisheries in Waters Contiguous to the United States and Canada.”

Rathbun’s ease with people, his organizational skills and his knowledge of Smithsonian collections and research made him a prime candidate for the job of Assistant Secretary of the institution in charge of offices and exchanges. His 1897 appointment led to the directorship of the U.S. National Museum in 1901. He also served as acting secretary in 1899 during which time he received an inquiry from Wilbur Wright asking for information from the Smithsonian on the possibility of aerial flight. Rathbun quickly responded, sending Wright a package of information which Wilbur and his brother Orville used in their studies on aerodynamics ...

05/31/2011

Inci Bowman, centennial volunteer interviewer, together with scientific illustrator George Venable, in the Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History at the conclusion of their interview, 2010. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

For the National Museum of Natural History’s centennial celebrations, the Museum teamed up with the Smithsonian Institution Archives to conduct an oral history program. Staff were invited to submit nominations of interview subjects, and a centennial committee made the final selections. The individuals chosen represent the many types of jobs that go into making the Museum work, as well as the wide range of scientific disciplines that the National Museum of Natural History studies. Staff members volunteered to serve as interviewers and were trained by the director of the SI Archives’ Institutional History Division, Dr. Pamela Henson. These new interviews will form part of the collection of oral histories that Dr. Henson has been conducting at the Smithsonian since the early 1970s.

Listen to the stories of those who greet visitors, travel the globe in search of new species, care for 126 million artifacts and specimens, and prepare exhibits for the public to enjoy. Explore the oceans in a submersible, scan deserts for ancient meteorites, and learn what it takes to run an insect zoo. Click here to dive in!

04/12/2011

Dr. David Pawson at the microscope in 1980, when he was curator of echinoderms. Photo by Chip Clark, Smithsonian Institution.

Dr. David Pawson is an expert on echinoderms—sea cucumbers, sea urchins, and sea stars. He grew up in Napier, a city on the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand, where early on he developed an interest in marine life. He attended Victoria University in Wellington, which had a strong program in marine biology at that time, and stayed to pursue doctoral research under H. Barraclough Fell, an authority on sea urchins and starfish. Pawson came to the United States at the same time as his mentor. When Professor Fell was invited by Harvard University to join their faculty, he recommended Pawson to the Smithsonian Institution, which was then seeking a scientist specializing in invertebrate zoology. Dr. Pawson joined the staff of the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) as Associate Curator and Supervisor of Echinoderms in 1964—an exciting time of growth at the Smithsonian.

03/08/2011

Dr. Mary Rice holds a sand-burrowing species of a worm-like marine animal called a sipunculan. In the background are pictures of oceanic larvae of sipunculans. Credit: Photo by Tom Smoyer; image courtesy of Smithsonian Marine Station.

Dr. Mary E. Rice came to the Smithsonian in 1966, soon after the completion of her PhD in zoology at the University of Washington, to work in the Division of Worms, part of the Department of Invertebrate Zoology at the National Museum of Natural History. She was in charge of curating the sipunculan and echiuran collections. Sipunculans and echiurans are primitive, unsegmented worm-like marine animals that typically live in burrows of sand or mud, or in rock or coral crevices. They are found in all the world’s oceans from shallow waters to abyssal depths. Rice has devoted her career to the study of sipunculans, an important but little-known marine group, focusing her research on their evolution and development. Her research interests have extended further to include the larger field of life histories of marine organisms.

Rice grew up on a farm outside of Washington, D.C., in southern Maryland, where she was surrounded by nature—including cows, chickens, horses, cats, dogs, and other animals. She received her first microscope at a very young age, and even before high school she had decided she would be a biologist. She matriculated at Drew University in New Jersey in 1943, where she was part of the first class of women. During summers she received scholarships to study marine biology at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. After obtaining an M.A. degree in zoology at Oberlin College, she returned to Drew to teach for a year, followed by two years as a research associate at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. The death of her father in 1952 brought her back home to the D.C. area, where she worked at the National Institutes of Health in cancer and toxicology research. She eventually left the NIH to pursue a Ph.D. in marine biology at the University of Washington, gaining more field and research experience at the Friday Harbor Laboratories on San Juan Island.

Tags:
biologists, evolution and development, invertebrates, marine life animals, research projects, the creation, the creator, the national musuem of natural history, the smithsonian museum, zoological

12/07/2010

Today the Museum held its annual Peer Recognition Awards ceremony - a time-honored tradition to recognize our colleagues for their exemplary dedication, talent, and service. One past recipient is Officer James McGrath, who is featured on the timeline of our Centennial website. Check out his story below and then browse the timeline for more NMNH stories and history!

Image courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.

Officer James McGrath of the National Museum of Natural History, Protection Services, offers stickers to visitors who enter his No. 20 Elevator in the Constitution Avenue lobby of the Museum. He starts the day with a roll of 2,150 smiley face stickers, as well as lady bugs, fish and American flags - on an average day, he gives away 800. His record is 1,800 in one day. Children, parents, even senior citizens, have their day brightened by his smile, jokes and cheery stickers. Indeed, Museum Director Cristián Samper has two of Officer McGrath's stickers - of fish - on his Museum ID badge. Officer McGrath is a retired lawyer from Kansas City, Missouri, who was awarded a bronze star in World War II.

09/28/2010

As part of our celebration of the National Museum of Natural History’s 100th anniversary, we have been recording oral history interviews with the staff. These audio and video interviews capture life at the Museum and give a behind-the-scenes look at the type of work done here. The people interviewed represent the many different jobs that make the Museum run – guards, collections managers, curators, taxidermists, food services staff, photographer and exhibits specialist, to name a few. The interviews were recorded by staff, volunteers and interns, bringing the Museum family even closer together.

One of our first interviewees was Chip Clark (pictured at right), an extraordinary museum photographer, who reminisced about all the things he had learned in his 35-year career at the Museum, noting, “There are no linear paths in my life.” Clark was interviewed by American University student John Minks and Smithsonian intern Lauren Dare. His reminiscences became even more precious when he passed away suddenly after his second interview.

Guard Andre Bell discussed with George Washington University student Emma Lang the challenges of keeping the Museum and its visitors secure in a post-9/11 world. He noted that “no two days are the same” in a place like the Natural History Museum, which has 126 million objects and 7.4 million visitors per year. Daily incidents ranged from lost children, providing directions to visitors from all over the globe, to insects escaping from the Insect Zoo or a visit from President Obama’s daughters.

Exhibit specialist Paul Rhymer (pictured at left) talked with student Cigdem Pakel of American University about how his career allowed him to use his creative skills in ever changing ways, including creating a remote controlled “robo-badger” that was used to train endangered black-footed ferrets to respond to predators such as badgers. Although he initially did more two dimensional work, his career in the Exhibits Department included taxidermy and moved him into the 3-D nature sculpture that he is noted for today via Paul Rhymer Studio.

Audrey Butler. Image courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.

Food services staff member Audrey Butler (pictured at right) has worked at the Museum since 1984 and seen its services and visitorship grow. With Mark White of the Human Studies Film Archives, she fondly recalled the old days with a revolving food table, known as a carousel, where visitors picked pre-made items, and Butler herself was nicknamed “the Queen of the Carousel.” Butler is a “people person” who has always cared about the staff and visitors. In January of 2009, she arrived in the pre-dawn hours to be sure that food was available to the huge number of visitors to President Obama’s inauguration, just one of the many special events she has been part of.

Curator Dave Pawson shared stories of his career studying echinoderms with Museum volunteer Inci Bowman. A native of Australia, Pawson arrived at the Museum in 1964. His reminiscences include a trip to Palmer Base in Antarctica, snorkeling off Ascension Island with colleagues to collect specimens, and even diving in the deep-sea submersible, the Alvin. He shares his excitement traveling along the deep ocean floor glimpsing, and then collecting, organisms never before seen by humans.